The Sunset Warrior - 01 (21 page)

He turned back to the miniature. Here was where the armoured warrior had stood, and there was the entrance through which the terrible presence had been about to enter. He heard again in his mind the lure of the music. He lifted the glass top. As soon as he did so something caught his eye. A sliver of light yellow from under the marble floor. He stared at it for a moment until it struck him what it must be.

He drew his dagger and slipped the point under the side of the replica, lifting slowly, but it did not give. He tried along one end, and was able, after moments of experimentation, to pry it up.

With mounting excitement, he drew out the sheet, knowing somehow that at the top would be written the line of glyphs for which they had been searching. The miniature fell back into place as he released it, and he called to G’fand, as he stared at the black line of their inscription. Below, the scroll was covered from top to bottom with close-written glyphs.

They clapped each other on the back. G’fand held it as they descended the wide curving staircase. He shook his head. ‘It is a language I cannot even begin to understand.’

Ronin took it from him. ‘Someone will have to decipher it.’ He rolled it into as tight a cylinder as he was able. ‘Now that we have it, I shall make sure that we do not lose it.’

The shadows were long, the slanting light deep amber as they went down the black stone steps, the gold veins iridescent. The city seemed peaceful; the dense quiet acquiring a languorous lustre as the day waned. They set off back the way they had come, tired but jubilant at the success of their quest.

Perhaps it was the sounds of their voices or the buoyancy of their mood or the vista of the jumbled city, somehow more familiar, that lay before them bathed in the warm light.

Or perhaps it was something else altogether that caused him to fail to see the movement behind them. It came swiftly. A sharp cloying odour. He whirled and his sword was out in the same motion. But it was too late. He was slammed as if by a giant’s fist and he reeled into the gutter, tumbling upon the cobbles. Crimson fire was in his lungs and all the breath went out of him. He tried to inhale, gasped weakly.

Through a haze he saw the creature that had attacked them just before they reached the magus’s house. Its thick sinuous tail lashed back and forth continuously as it reached curved talons towards G’fand. He had drawn his sword and was doing his best to defend himself. It was ineffectual.

Ronin tried to rise but it was as if he were paralysed. He lay in the gutter, striving to raise his sword, struggling to breathe, watching the thing close with G’fand. The hideous beak opened and closed spasmodically, and then it took hold of G’fand’s sword along the blade. The metal crumbled within the grip of its six-fingered hands.

With a mighty effort Ronin came up on his knees, leaning on his sword, head shaking like that of a wounded animal. He gained his feet, staggered, searched for balance. His sword clanged on to the cobbles. Drawing his dagger, he ran at the creature from behind.

Its talons were at G’fand’s throat, squeezing. He looked helpless and stunned. Ronin smelled the awful stench and the coldness just before he slammed into the thing’s back. It was like hitting a wall. It ignored him. He climbed upon its back, saw dimly G’fand’s legs dangling in the air, his eyes bulging. Then the pain engulfed him. Bolts of fire penetrated his flesh and he fought back a scream. Time shifted.

He was a microbe upon a mountain, climbing hopelessly. The dagger in his hand writhed uncontrollably and he almost let it go, but the sight of G’fand’s twisted, pain-filled face was before him, and it drove him on. The pain moved through his body and his lower half began to go numb. His legs and feet still churned for purchase on the scaly hide but he could not feel them, they were parts of someone else’s body. Still he clawed upward with his free hand and dagger-filled fist. He gasped at the stinking air, but his lungs would not hold the foulness, and he retched, eyes watering. He concentrated on the shining point of the short blade.

All strength seemed to flow out of him. The numbness began to creep upward. Soon it would be at his brain and he knew he would be finished. Far away in another world he heard a terrible sound, horribly malformed, as if a human voice were being forced through an alien larynx. Far away in another world his body was freezing. Far away into another world he was slipping—

Desperately he forced his eyes open, stared into an infinity of orange coldness, black irises like shards of obsidian, as large as planets. Laughter.

He drew upon his last resources of will, and with a supreme effort, with his final surge of strength, he forced the blade through the air. Pale hand slipping into his at the centre of his being. And he ripped it point first into the gaping maw.

Renewed foulness smote him and he retched violently. Dimly he was aware of a thin screaming like the unbearable tension of a singing wire. He rammed it in with all his power, twisting the blade mightily. Brought both hands on to the hilt.

Abruptly there came a sharp snap, a vibration, and an enormous convulsion, and the howling reached a peak. With that he sank down into a velvet blackness against which he at first tried to struggle, and then from which he was too tired even to return.

He awoke all at once with the terrible stench of the thing still in his nostrils. He coughed, wiped his mouth. All around him the cobbles were shining and slippery with streaks of crimson and viscous pools of black. There was no sign of the creature but G’fand lay several metres from him. He got up slowly and carefully, went over, knelt beside him. G’fand’s eyes bulged and his tongue protruded thickly from his blue lips. There was pink foam on his chin, drying now. His skin held a faint luminescence. His neck was canted at an unnatural angle. His throat had been rent into ribbons of red cartilage.

Ronin’s colourless eyes were opaque as he reached out and gently closed the Scholar’s eyes. He sat on his haunches amid the offal of the battle and stared at G’fand. Many thoughts ran through his mind but they were as confused and unreachable as a school of darting fish in deep water.

The shadows lengthened slowly, wheeling about the ancient enigmatic buildings, staining the aged cobbles. Far off an animal barked, a short, sharp, startling sound, and close by, small creatures, perhaps attracted by the scent of fresh blood, could be heard, tiny claws skittering along an alleyway.

To all these sounds Ronin was oblivious. He stared, his breathing laboured, at a torn and bloody corpse that had once thought and talked and felt joy and sorrow.

He got up. The ache of his muscles seemed very distant. He bent and gently picked up G’fand’s body, eased it over his shoulder. It felt as light as a feather. He went across the glittering cobbles to get his sword. The toe of his boot kicked something that went clattering over the street. The hilt of his dagger, shorn of its blade. He sheathed his sword.

In the plaza the glint of the tiles was dull in the fading light. He found the corpses of the animals they had killed already half-eaten. He looked around, but nothing moved over the broad expanse.

He went to the well and, without pausing for a moment, dropped G’fand’s body down the shaft. After a long time, he heard the splash and it seemed to him no louder than the sound the piece of rubble had made.

Darkness was falling, its thick shawl snuffing the last of the long amber shafts of light, the encroaching shadows now dominating the streets, when at last he stood before the scarred door of Bonneduce the Last, and leaned his weary body against the warm wood. He could not remember how he had got there. He heard a snuffling from behind him, near, in the lane. It sounded somehow familiar, as if it had accompanied him for a while, but he was too exhausted to turn his head and look.

Through the door he heard Hynd’s low cough, and then it was thrown open and he collapsed at the feet of Bonneduce the Last.

Bonneduce the Last had already been on his way down the stairs when he heard Hynd’s cough. In one hand he held an old leather double shoulder bag. He put something into it and said, ‘Almost time.’ Then he threw the bag across a chair, crossed the room with remarkable alacrity, his shoulder dipping with each stride of his short leg. He pulled open the front door.

Hynd rushed out into the lane, growling, jaws working. He bit into something, tore away a tremendous chunk of flesh. Bonneduce the Last heard the yelp of pain as he dragged Ronin across the room and settled him into one of the large soft chairs. Hynd trotted in, licking his lips, and used his long muzzle to close the door. Then he lay down and watched the little man minister to Ronin.

By the time he had spent some minutes stripping off Ronin’s corselet, the metal blackened and ripped, and removed the tattered remains of his shirt, his eyes had gone cold and hard. The lines on his face seemed to be more pronounced.

‘Already the Makkon are abroad,’ he said. ‘Even here they have come.’

Hynd’s head came up, and now he stood at the door, a silent sentinel. The little man pulled his leather bag to him, drew out a packet of ointment, which he applied to Ronin’s chest and arms. He spoke to Hynd. ‘The Bones can tell me only so much. The young one I knew would not come back.’ His hands worked swiftly and surely. ‘I am past feeling for them, the Bones have seen to that, else I would have gone mad. It is what I must do.’

Bonneduce the Last went into the interior of the house, returned with a goblet of water. Into this he dropped several grains of a coarse brown powder, which he fed to Ronin as best he could. As much ran down his chin as went into his mouth.

‘He will sleep now as his body recovers.’ He threw the remains of the liquid into the cold ashes of the fireplace. ‘He has suffered much, now. And he will suffer more. Yet it has to be. Out of pain he must be forged.’

He got up then, went briefly again into the interior. When he came back he held a small object of brown onyx and red jade. He slipped it into his bag. ‘And now, one thing yet remains to be done before we quit this city.’ He reached something out from his leather bag, held it for a moment, feeling its texture with his fingertips. ‘Yes,’ he said softly, ‘it becomes clearer, piece by piece.’ He placed the object on the table beside the sleeping Ronin.

He awoke to silence, deep and complete. But it was somehow hollow and empty and he spent some time attempting to determine why. He knew precisely where he was. Then he had it: the ticking was gone.

With that he rose and called out. No one answered. He went across the room and quickly up the stairs, aware that most of the pain had gone from his body. The rooms were bare. It was the same downstairs. No signs remained that either Bonneduce the Last or Hynd had ever been there.

He sat down again in the chair. Morning light was streaming in through the dusty grimed windows, bright and fresh and new. Idly he traced the beams of light, slanting in, and his eyes came to rest on a gauntlet spangled by the light, lying on top of the table next to the chair; the only foreign object in the house.

He picked it up and immediately he was struck by its singularity. It was heavy and there appeared to be no seams except along each fingertip, almost as if the closings of the apertures had been made by shearing off nails. Then two bits of information came to him at once: the scaly texture of the gauntlet and the fact that it had six fingers. It cannot be, he thought with a shock. But the longer he examined it the more convinced he became. He was holding a gauntlet made from the hand of the creature he and G’fand had fought; the thing that had killed the Scholar. Something blazed far back in his eyes. He recalled the trek to the plaza, the small splash of the body, knew that at that precise moment an irrevocable step had been taken. And he had done it.

Without further thought, he pulled on the gauntlet with his left hand, flexing his fingers. The light turned the scales to silver, reflective and brilliant.

He left the house then, and strode down the crooked lane, the air cool and fresh against his face, to start his return to Borros and the Freehold far above him.

They were glittery. Wet-looking yet opaque. They were an entire universe, seeing everything now; seeing nothing. What struck him most deeply, however, were the lines of fear etched into the features. And the red marks. Must it come in such a manner? He was becoming an expert on it: Death.

He stood in the lamplight of the Medicine Man’s side room. He had come there to see Borros and had not found him.

He stared down at the body on the bed. The heavy, lined face so frightened in life. The rheumy eyes were glazed. He thought, What have they done to you, Stahlig?

The flame from the sole lamp flickered in the draught. The door to the Corridor opened and Ronin’s hand went instinctively to the hilt of his sword.

‘I truly wish you would try it,’ said Freidal softly. Ronin turned slowly, saw the Security Saardin and three daggam. Freidal went over to the concealed door, opened it. Four more daggam stepped through.

His mouth curled in the parody of a smile. ‘Come, come. Where are the heroics that a Bladesman should be famous for?’ His voice was silken with subdued triumph. ‘Will you not fight your way out? Take us all on?’ His good eye stared with intensity. ‘Take his weapons,’ he barked, and they disarmed him. Freidal had chosen the place well, he thought. No room to manoeuvre in such a small area. No chance.

Freidal’s face was a mask. His slick hair glistened. He looked relaxed, almost happy. ‘Did you believe for a moment that you could drop from our Levels without my knowledge?’ The ghost of a smile played along his thin, white lips. ‘Stupid boy!’ His tongue clucked reprovingly against the roof of his mouth. ‘You were warned. A courtesy which you chose to ignore.’ Freidal stepped closer to him, and daggam on either side gripped Ronin’s wrists, although he had made no movement.

The Saardin reached out and removed Ronin’s corselet, stared at the welts along his chest. ‘As I knew you would.’ He ran a finger across the bruised flesh. ‘You see, I could not get what I wanted from that accursed Magic Man. The fool! But it was purely accidental.’ He laughed, a sharp, disquieting sound. ‘I knew it would work then, throwing you and Borros together.’